The Approval Trap

Well, the scope of this seminar is people-pleasing, and we are thinking about life on the horizontal plane, from me to you, from you to them, and we will be focusing on our own responses primarily.

That's not to say that the people that we relate to always get it right.

They don't.

But the scope of our time together is to think about ourselves and the part that we play in our relationships.

So today I will be presenting you with some ideas to get under the skin of this issue.

And I've worked on some resources that I'll introduce you to later.

Some of them are on the website and some of them, they were out there, but they've gone out there now.

So I'm hoping that today will be a little introduction and that you'll be able to go home and think about these things more deeply and pray about them and talk to others about them.

So it may feel a little whistle-stop at some points, but my idea is to introduce you to some ideas and things that I've been thinking about, and my prayer is that you'd go away and take some more time thinking about this at home.

I also hope that this time will equip you in your conversations.

BCUK exists primarily to resource people, and the people that come on this conference are here because many of you are involved in pastoral ministry, conversational ministry, loving the people around you with the words of Christ.

And so my prayer is that this might equip you for your conversations as well.

Now, I thought I'd just start by presenting you with my little argument for the day.

We naturally live focused on pleasing others.

We naturally live focused on pleasing others.

We even think that making everyone happy, keeping conflicts at bay and ease in our relationships is what God wants.

But God calls us to something much bigger, God-dependent love for others.

So those are kind of my two ends of the spectrum, people-focused pleasing and God-dependent love.

And this love that we're talking about today is a love for other people that flows from a heart that is alive and attentive to Jesus.

And this love actually leads to greater peace, joy, and freedom from preoccupation with ourselves.

And it leads to transformation in our relationships.

So my hope and prayer for us today is that our focus would shift from pleasing others to depending on God in our relationships.

And I know that as it does, as our focus begins to shift more and more, we will become people overflowing with the joy of the Lord.

So really, the joy of the Lord is our goal and my hope for today.